iNiS

At the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, iNiS Vice President Keiichi Yano described the process which eventually resulted in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. His first inspirations for the game came when he first tried a Nintendo DS handheld, and development on the game began after successfully pitching the concept to Nintendo.

At the conference, he also displayed early concept art for lead Ouendan character Ryūta Ippongi, who originally wore the shirt of his gaku-ran uniform unbuttoned and had a significantly shorter hairstyle. Yano noted that Nintendo was fond of the characters due to their manga-style aesthetic. Yano also displayed an unused Ouendan stage from a prototype build that featured a puppy in danger. The stage concept was ultimately dropped from the final version of the game because the puppy died if the player failed the stage.

Due to the surprisingly high import rate of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, Nintendo and iNiS began discussing the possibility of officially exporting the game to other regions. However, as Keiichi Yano, vice president of iNiS and director of the game explained in an interview with 1UP.com, selling the game at retail in Western markets would have been unfeasible due to the game’s innate reliance on Japanese popular music and cultural references. It was due to this fact that when Yano and iNiS began work on the North American version, the black-clad cheerleaders of Ouendan were removed and work began on a replacement.

The first concepts were of a trio of dancers styled after the Village People, before the final decision of a trio of men styled after government agents, using distinctly Western references such as the Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers, Men in Black and Austin Powers series for inspiration. In addition, the concept of the Elite Beat Divas and Commander Kahn directing the Agents would come from Charlie’s Angels. [Info from Wikipedia]

The first video below is from the Beta version of Elite Beat Agents. The EBA beta shows many small differences that weren’t present in the final version of the game. These many things include flames on the bottom of the touch screen for a certain amount of consecutive beats, pink circles for completing song sections, different girls in the car and different transitions used. Some audio differences are also in place. Those include different voices (such as the announcer at the start that says “Mission” and a few sound effects.

Also, Yosher noticed that the second video below includes beta stuff like the agents not waving their arms before the gameplay starts. The same goes for the character in need. The image that pops up of the lead Agent on the bottom screen is also different, and there’s some images on the top screen as well that aren’t there in the final game. Other than that, the Agents animations are entirely different from the final game, almost like those of the Ouendan. This video seems to show the game being in the middle of the translation from Ouendan to Elite Beat Agents.

Find your unseen game:

Search

What do we do?

Unseen64 is an archive to preserve articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change and cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents of this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation. We are a collective of gamers from all around the world, in our limited free time we do the best we can to remember these lost games. You can help too! All Unseen64 articles are published in good faith & fair use, if you find any errors or issues regarding some of them, just let us know.

Buy Games to Support U64:

Here are some games you can buy on Amazon: when we use affiliate links on Unseen64 we may receive a commission for the sale. For you is free, you don't pay anything more, but for us it helps a lot! Currently this is working for Amazon.com, Amazon.it and Amazon.co.uk :)

Unseen 64 Archive

If you want to help U64:

Unseen64 is an independent site. No money is generated from our work so we must pay each and every server bill ourselves. Thanks to your support we were able to rise enough donations to pay the server for this year! We are super happy :) Remaining donations are used to repay some of the time spent working on Unseen64 and set aside in a “preservation fund“, for emergency site expenses and other equipment that could help the archive: all expenses will be discussed with our patrons before to be used! For more details check: How does Unseen64 use Donations? If you want to donate some of your love, we accept one-off donations through PayPal / Credit Card and pledges on Patreon! You can just donate how much or little you want. Every cent is really appreciated and sent towards the U64 Archive. Thank you for even reading this :)